Genocide

Do you feel like the world has gone crazy—that it’s tilting out of control on its axis? The headlines in the news make me think I’m in the Twilight Zone and we have regressed a century or two. What happened to the progress we had made as civilized people? World War II was brutal, but hadn’t the world learned from this? It could never happen again, right? And what about the gains the Civil Rights Movement made? Were they so negligible? Didn’t we learn over the years that we were part of the same species, more alike than different no matter our race, country, religion or sexual orientation?

In the era when the Berlin Wall went down it seemed like global peace and freedom from tyranny for all were right around the corner. I remember that New Year’s Eve in 1989 when we believed all things possible. We never envisioned that could include the genocides in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda in the 1990’s.

As I began writing this blog, I wanted to know when the Rwanda Genocide had occurred. I googled it and was led to the page below. I don’t remember the history books of my youth including any of these acts of genocide. Reading about them made me feel sick, but I read each one. I encourage you to do so, as well. It puts perspective on the genocidal acts in the Middle East right now. ISIS is following in the bloody footprints of their predecessors.

The term ‘Genocide’ was coined by Polish writer and attorney, Raphael Lemkin, in 1941 by combining the Greek word ‘genos’ (race) with the Latin word ‘cide’ (killing). Genocide as defined by the United Nations in 1948 means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including:(a) killing members of the group (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

2 responses to “Genocide”

Completely agree. After 70 years on this planet, I honestly don’t see much has changed. We, as a species, appear to be war-like and violent and drunk on power or even the possibility of it. Not all of us, but too many of us.
I believe that our actions and reactions are based on fear – it seems to be at the bottom of so many damaging and hurtful acts, here at home and around the world. It is said: “Be the change you want to see”. Maybe lots of us don’t actually want things to change? I don’t know, but I am not serene about where we are going, as human beings living on Earth.